Suki Kim is a Korean American journalist and writer. She is the author of two books: the award-winning novel The Interpreter and a book of investigative journalism, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite. Kim is the only writer ever to have lived undercover in North Korea to conduct immersive journalism. Kim is currently a contributing editor at The New Republic. Early life Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States with her family at thirteen. Kim is a naturalized American citizen. Kim graduated from Barnard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Kim also studied East Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She has received a Fulbright Research Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Open Society Foundations Fellowship. Kim was also a Ferris Journalism Fellow at Princeton University, where she was a visiting lecturer. Work The Interpreter Kim's debut novel, The Interpreter, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is a murder mystery about a young Korean-American woman, Suzy Park, living in New York City and searching for answers as to why her shopkeeper parents were murdered. Kim took a short term job as an interpreter in New York City when working on the novel to look into the life of an interpreter. The book received positive critic reviews and won several awards. The Interpreter was translated into Dutch, French, Korean, Italian, and Japanese. Visits to North Korea and second book Kim visited North Korea in February 2002 to participate in the 60th birthday celebration of Kim Jong-il. She documented this experience in a February 2003 cover essay for The New York Review of Books. Kim accompanied the New York Philharmonic in February 2008, when they traveled to Pyongyang for the historical cultural visit to North Korea from the United States. Her article, "A Really Big Show: The New York Philharmonic's fantasia in North Korea," was published in Harper's Magazine in December 2008. Her second book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite, is a work of investigative journalism about her three and a half months in Pyongyang, where she taught English at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in 2011. The book has resulted in some controversy, with reviewers claiming that Kim brought harm on the students she wrote about, and